See, that we, full of
paternal kindness, keeping in view your person adorned with scientific
culture, graciously purpose, according to the authority granted as by
our aforesaid Lord, the Pope, to confer on you a title of special
dignity. But hereby you perceive in truth, whither our kind disposition
toward you would tend, when we now create you--who are a master of
arts, whom, we, out of regard to merits already alluded to, would
promote and adorn with the title and privileges of a special post of
honor,--you, whom we, if you have fallen in any way under any ban,
suspension, interdict, or other ecclesiastical sentence, or under any
censure or penalty of any court, or of individual men, be its origin
what it may, partaking in the operations of our favor, and turning your
prayer toward us in relation to the matter, we would now absolve and
have known as absolved--you, we now, in the name of our holy Lord, the
Pope and the Apostolic See, in accordance with these presents, create
an _acolyte-chaplain_, by the apostolical authority, granted us by the
most holy Father in Christ, our Lord, the Lord Leo X, Pope by the
decree of God, and exercised by us, and graciously enroll you in the
number and society of the other chosen acolyte-chaplains of our Lord,
the Pope, and the Romish See. At the same time we grant you the
possession and enjoyment of all the privileges, prerogatives, honors,
exceptions, favors, liberties, immunities and indulgences, singly and
collectively, which belong to the other acolyte-chaplains of our Lord,
the Pope and the Apostolic See, or which they in any way hereafter
shall be allowed to possess and enjoy, to be used by you freely and in
a lawful manner, unrestricted by the apostolic constitutions and
commands, or any other kind of impediment whatsoever. Then will you by
aspiring after virtue advance from good to better, and become worthy of
a still higher place in the presence of our Lord, the Pope and
ourselves, and he himself, our Lord, the Pope, and we will thereby be
moved to bestow on you more extensive favors and honors. The present
document is dispatched to bear witness, and we have allowed it to be
ratified by our seal appended thereto."

"An official style," the scientific reader, who looks at this letter
may exclaim; but the people, in whose ranks Zwingli ranged himself,
understood and needed another kind of language. That which the Church
granted to her pliant acolyte-chaplains--freedom from e